Her Heart.

On Wednesday nights, right after my kids get done reciting Bible verses and singing songs about Jesus, I turn into the pumpkin-mom. The mom who hugs them and tells them good job and then spends the entire 4 minute drive home reciting what it is that will happen when we return home. “Remember, it’s late so it’s time for pajamas and brushing teeth and bedtime. No time for books on Wednesdays.”

I probably say it 5, 6, maybe even 7 times before we walk into the house through the garage and even once inside I mostly whisper roar the instructions over and over and over again.

H does this and follows this to a t. He is content to review his Awana book or lay in bed and read after all this but Miss E. She talks and she asks questions and she comes back out because she forgot to tell me something she learned and as she speaks I see her lips moving but I am not hearing anything that comes out because I am simply thinking, how are you standing in front of me and not in bed because I am done, kaput, ready for bed.

At last it is quiet and I feel guilty because right after my kids get done reciting Bible verses and singing songs about Jesus, I rush them to bed. I could make excuses about how they were all up way. too. early. today but it’s pretty much every Wednesday that I am battling these feelings and it makes me sort of crazy, mad at myself because in the end, I care most about their hearts, their character and who they are and not those moments of downtime I crave at nighttime. It is yet another area I am so thankful for their grace and reminded that at the end of the day, I want kids with good hearts, even if it means bedtime doesn’t go as quickly as I’d like.

This past Sunday afternoon, after stopping in the Apple Store in Uptown, we were driving and about to turn a corner and E yelled from the back seat, “dad, that man needs our help.”

J and I saw the man. He was standing on the corner, dirty and cold, holding a cardboard sign. What it read, I couldn’t tell you because just as soon as we’d seen him, we were already driving past.

The irony of where we were shopping just before is not lost on me.

Miss E was quite miffed and confused on how we could possibly not help this man who clearly needed our help while H was a bit more skeptical. “It could be a scam,” he said in his ever practical thought process, erring on the side of caution and skepticism.

“It could be, but that’s not for us to judge,” I said and we drove on.

Shortly later while exiting the freeway, outside of the city now, there stood another man with a backpack and a sign.

“Mom!” E yelled and scurried in her seat, digging in the seat pocket for coins.

Her little five year old heart just wanted to help them and do something, anything.

So the next day, we stopped at the store and I let her pick up a few items to make bags for people we see on the street, so that the next time we are out and about we actually have something tangible to give them.
{H helped too.}

Oh, her heart, she loved making these bags and packaging them up just perfectly.

Once all the bags were packed, she asked to write a note and inside each bag put this note, all on her own.

She has been on the lookout for homeless people ever since. She is going to help anyone and everyone that she can because despite my failings at listening as she tells me one. more. time. just how heaven might be someday {lovely and happy and there won’t be bee stings or crying.} Despite all this, her heart is big and lovely and knows how to love, not just the easy and beautiful parts of life, but the hard to love, grubby looking, cardboard sign holding people.

Her heart is right and good and I think we all need to be a little bit more like her.